Forwarded From: darek milewski <darekm@cmeasures.com>
FBI Tries To Protect IT Systems From Intrusions
The FBI is set to launch a national rollout of InfraGard, a partnership of
businesses, the bureau, and its National Infrastructure Protection Center.
The alliance is designed to protect IT systems from hacker attacks and
other intrusions by providing a network for sharing information about
attacks and how to thwart them.
InfraGard, which the FBI began as a pilot program in Cleveland in 1997,
will initially be expanded to at least 15 major cities around the country
-- including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles,
Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington -- says Van
Harp, the FBI's special agent in charge of the Cleveland division. Harp
says representatives from the FBI's 15 largest field offices recently met
to discuss the expansion. He gave no specific timetable for the effort.
InfraGard was formed as part of the federal government's effort to protect
the nation's critical information systems. It's designed to ultimately
serve as a national clearinghouse of information about security intrusions
and vulnerabilities, and to offer tools to help detect and prevent
attacks.
Members are linked to each other and to the FBI by the bureau's secure
"alert network," so companies can immediately and anonymously report
incidents to government authorities and other members. The FBI provides
encryption software developed by AT&T to protect information exchange
among members. The National Infrastructure Protection Center will use data
gathered from different InfraGard chapters to compile reports on
nationwide security trends. The network will be expanded as the
organization grows, Harp says. The FBI hopes the InfraGard program, which
has already led to several computer-security criminal investigations, will
lead to more reports of intrusions, he adds. -- Bob Violino
***For more on security, see the InformationWeek Resource Center;
http://www.informationweek.com/center/entman.htm
-o-
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Received on Fri Apr 16 15:22:27 1999